Intel Still Has The Upperhand On BSD Support - Core i9 10980XE Benchmarks With DragonFlyBSD + FreeBSD

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Intel Still Has The Upperhand On BSD Support - Core i9 10980XE Benchmarks With DragonFlyBSD + FreeBSD

While the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X is delivering better raw Linux performance in a far majority of workloads compared to the Intel Core i9 10980XE, one of the areas where the Cascadelake-X platform and Intel CPUs still have an advantage is when it comes to the BSD support. Intel actively supports the BSDs more than AMD and in turn leads to the latest hardware generally working out fine on the latest BSDs. Here are some DragonFlyBSD and FreeBSD tests against Linux with the i9-10980XE.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=28680

[stormcrow]

Those are some eye opening results, no mistake. Used to be FreeBSD was very hit or miss on performance. It's become far more consistent over the past year since the release of v R12.x

Now if only they had consistently easy to use packaging like Linux distros. Yes I know that's flame bait, but I really don't like ports as the whole concept is inconvenient for those that just want a working system, and their binary packages tend to not have features that I want or need in base packages and mixing the two can cause "issues".

And frankly the repackaged FreeBSD "distros" pretty much suck IMO.

[Raka555]

I don't know why some people hate Intel so much.
They clearly do a lot to make their products work well on open source.
Something I wish their competition would take note of...

[Luke_Wolf]

While the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X is delivering better raw Linux performance in a far majority of workloads compared to the Intel Core i9 10980XE, one of the areas where the Cascadelake-X platform and Intel CPUs still have an advantage is when it comes to the BSD support. Intel actively supports the BSDs more than AMD and in turn leads to the latest hardware generally working out fine on the latest BSDs. Here are some DragonFlyBSD and FreeBSD tests against Linux with the i9-10980XE.

Um... Michael really?

Do you remember a certain other article where you wrote:

For those of you interested in AMD's new Ryzen Threadripper 3960X/3970X processors with TRX40 motherboards for running FreeBSD, the experience in our initial testing has been surprisingly pleasant. In fact, it works out-of-the-box which one could argue is better than the current Linux support that needs the MCE workaround for booting. Here are some benchmarks of FreeBSD 12.1 on the Threadripper 3970X compared to Linux and Windows for this new HEDT platform.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=freebsd-amd-3970x&num=1

Sure... DragonFly doesn't work but does Intel actually contribute to DragonFly at all? I was under the impression their efforts were all on FreeBSD and OpenBSD.

[tildearrow]

I don't know why some people hate Intel so much.

See Meltdown/Spectre/L1TF/Zombieload/etc.

Also see how <InsertNameHere> Lake is the same as Skylake.

[vegabook]

I don't know why some people hate Intel so much.
They clearly do a lot to make their products work well on open source.
Something I wish their competition would take note of...

Because their marketing people gouged us with 4-core silicon that stood still for a decade. All the greatest kudos to the engineers and software guys though, who I hope will be able to get the entire marketing and PR departments fired.

[starshipeleven]

I don't know why some people hate Intel so much.

If it wasn't for Ryzen they would still sell i5 with 4 cores and i7 with 4 cores + Hyperthreading.

Also all the BS about the "ultrabook" CPUs called i7 and i5 that are in fact mobile i3s with slightly better clock speed.

[kylew77]

It is nice to see *BSD benchmarks. This is the only site I know of that gives any love to the *BSDs. Nice to see FreeBSD 12.1 so performant glad I choose it as my main OS on my workstation. Would be nice to see some NetBSD and OpenBSD benchmarks sometime. I keep hearing that NetBSD is almost as perfromant on AMD64 architecture as FreeBSD.

[Michael]

It is nice to see *BSD benchmarks. This is the only site I know of that gives any love to the *BSDs. Nice to see FreeBSD 12.1 so performant glad I choose it as my main OS on my workstation. Would be nice to see some NetBSD and OpenBSD benchmarks sometime. I keep hearing that NetBSD is almost as perfromant on AMD64 architecture as FreeBSD.

Unfortunately I am not aware of many BSD users being Phoronix Premium members, so testing is just as it comes about / time allows. FreeBSD and DragonFlyBSD are the BSDs I am most interested in so that is what they are tested with my limited time, but if premium members request NetBSD/OpenBSD, will work on adding them to the queue as it allows.

[aht0]

Now if only they had consistently easy to use packaging like Linux distros. Yes I know that's flame bait, but I really don't like ports as the whole concept is inconvenient for those that just want a working system, and their binary packages tend to not have features that I want or need in base packages and mixing the two can cause "issues".

Yep, mixing ports and binary pkg's may get sucky. On the other hand it's pretty flexible and there's some ways to mix.

How I do that, created custom /etc/make.conf then installed ports-mgmt/synth and created soft link /etc/make.conf -> /usr/local/etc/synth/LiveSystem-make.conf (file by default does not exist).
Sample (original is somewhat longer):

OPTIONS_UNSET+=  DOCS LANG_AF LANG_AK LANG_AM LANG_AR LANG_AST LANG_BB \
            LANG_BE LANG_BG LANG_BN LANG_BR LANG_BS LANG_CA LANG_CS \
            LANG_CY LANG_DA LANG_DE LANG_EL LANG_EO LANG_ES LANG_TW \
            LANG_EU LANG_FA LANG_FI LANG_FR LANG_FY LANG_GA LANG_GB \
            LANG_GD LANG_GL LANG_GU LANG_HE LANG_HI LANG_HR LANG_HU \
            LANG_ID LANG_IS LANG_IT LANG_JA LANG_JP LANG_KK LANG_KN \
            LANG_KO LANG_KU LANG_LG LANG_LK LANG_LT LANG_LV LANG_MAI \
            LANG_MK LANG_ML LANG_MN LANG_MR LANG_NB LANG_NL LANG_NN \
            LANG_NSO LANG_OR LANG_PA LANG_PBR LANG_PL LANG_PT LANG_RM \
            LANG_RO LANG_RU LANG_SA LANG_SC LANG_SE LANG_SI LANG_SK \
            LANG_SL LANG_SM LANG_SON LANG_SQ LANG_SR LANG_SV LANG_TA \
            LANG_TE LANG_TH LANG_TR LANG_UA LANG_UK LANG_VI LANG_ZA \
            LANG_ZU

x11-drivers_xorg-drivers_SET+=\
        APM INTEL MOUSE KEYBOARD VESA SYNAPTICS FBDEV VMWARE VMMOUSE WACOM
x11-drivers_xorg-drivers_UNSET+=\
        ATI MACH64 NV R128 RADEONHD OPENCHROME ACECAD ELOGRAPHICS \
        HYPERPEN JOYSTICK MAGICTOUCH MUTOUCH PENMOUNT \
        VMMOUSE VOID ARK CHIPS CIRRUS CYRIX DUMMY \
        GLINT I128 I740 IMSTT MGA NEOMAGIC NEWPORT RENDITION \
        S3 S3VIRGE SAVAGE SILICONMOTION SIS TDFX TGA TRIDENT \
        TSENG VIA VOODOO

editors_libreoffice_UNSET+= CUPS GTK2
editors_libreoffice_SET+= KDE5 PGSQL

x11_nvidia-driver-390_SET+= ACPI_PM WBINVD
x11_nvidia-driver-390_UNSET+= LINUX

multimedia_ffmpeg_SET+= NONFREE FDK_AAC OPENGL OPENMPT SNDIO
multimedia_ffmpeg_UNSET+= DAV1D DOCS AOM

multimedia_kdemultimedia_UNSET+= DRAGON

graphics_kdegraphics_UNSET+= GPHOTO KOLOURPAINT KRULER MOBIPOCKET SKANLITE THUMBNAILER

www_chromium_SET+= SNDIO
www_chromium_UNSET+= ALSA

DEFAULT_VERSIONS+=linux=c7_64
DEFAULT_VERSIONS+=mysql=8.0
DEFAULT_VERSIONS+=llvm=90
DEFAULT_VERSIONS+=python3=3.8
DEFAULT_VERSIONS+=samba=4.10
DEFAULT_VERSIONS+=pgsql=12

I'd install all the software I think I need by using downloaded binary packages first, could be thousand, it does not matter in the least. Then I'd do portsnap auto , it would update the ports tree, it's not related to binary packages but it is needed by synth utility below.

Once done with binary package install, I'd do synth upgrade-system ,when custom options conflict - synth would let me know, so I won't worry about that. Same with package versions.

synth will by itself figure out which packages have to be re-built along with their affected dependencies, would rebuild them, remove the old packages and install newly built packages upon completion. It's completely automatic at this point. Odds are that lots of previously installed binary packages are not requiring rebuild and I'd save significant time overall compared to building whole nine yards from scratch. When versions in ports tree differ significantly from installed binaries I won't get off that easily - but once you one synth upgrade-system has been completed, all the following synth upgrade-system 's are going to mean just incremental upgrades. Meaning: Just packages that have received updates in ports tree compared to last iteration will be built. That's usually set up as a cron job from that point forward - quite worry free.